Road Rights and Bicycle Advocacy

When the Cop Says Stop

What do you do when you know your area's bike laws, but the police don't?

bob mionske

Eventually, he settled on a pair of charges. First, he charged Ryan with "Operating a bike on the roadway." He also charged Ryan with "Failure to comply with an order." As the Deputy later explained in his testimony, the problem was that he wanted to charge the two riders with impeding traffic, but couldn't find the appropriate law for a bike. This was because he didn't understand that cyclists are subject to the same laws as other vehicle operators, and therefore, if they were impeding traffic, they should have been charged with impeding traffic. Instead, the Deputy believed that the law required cyclists to obey all traffic rules applicable to vehicles, and that busting Ryan for "Operating a bike on the roadway" covered violations of other laws, like impeding traffic. Ryan says that two weeks later, the prosecutor added an "impeding traffic" charge to cover the violation that the Deputy thought Ryan had committed.

Meanwhile, at the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office, Tony was also charged with "Operating a bike on the roadway"; he says that later, as the prosecutor did with Ryan, an additional charge of "impeding traffic" was added. Due to the circumstances surrounding the arrest Tony was also charged with failure to comply with an order, resisting arrest, attempted assault on an officer and obstructing official business.

Ryan says that as his trial date approached, the prosecutor offered him a deal--testify against Tony, and the charges against Ryan would be dropped. Ryan says that he refused to save himself by "throwing Tony under the bus," as he puts it. So, with the case against Ryan scheduled to go to trial, Ryan's attorney filed a motion to dismiss the charges. Tony's attorney did the same.

In its decision following the hearing on the motion to dismiss Tony's charges, the Court began by noting that the state had the burden of proving that the arrest was consistent with the 4th Amendment, but that the state must only meet that burden by a "preponderance of the evidence," rather than the higher "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. This means that the state would simply have to prove that it was more likely than not that the arrest was consistent with the 4th Amendment; this is the easiest burden of proof.

The central question was whether Tony had been impeding traffic. If the state proved that it was more likely than not that Tony had been impeding traffic, then the order to pull over was lawful, and the arrest for failure to comply with that order was also lawful; if that was the case, the charges would not be dismissed. On the other hand, if the state failed to prove that Tony had been impeding traffic, then the order to pull over was not lawful, and the subsequent arrest for failure to comply was also not lawful, and the charges would be dismissed.

This meant that the prosecution had to show that Tony was riding at a speed that was unreasonably slow for a cyclist--a task that proved impossible, once the Deputy testified that he estimated the cyclists' speed at 15-20 MPH, but didn't really know how fast they were going, and admitted that he didn't know what the speed limit on that road is, within the city limits. There was simply no evidence that the cyclists had ever impeded traffic, and thus, the Deputy had no reason to stop the cyclists, and they could not be charged with failure to comply with his orders. The charges were dismissed.

Later, at the hearing on the motion to dismiss the charges against Ryan, the prosecutor was once again unable to prove the impeding traffic charge, and the Court reached the same decision that it reached following Tony's hearing, dismissing the charges against Ryan.